Cees de Groot protests too much:

I can be long and short about this, but Google trampling privacy laws by publishing recognizable pictures of people with its new Street View feature means that my doubts about their “do no evil” PR slogan have vanished - it’s indeed just a PR slogan, not something they actually believe in and adhere to.

I’m a photographer, and this is a clear-cut case: if you want to publish pictures of people, you need a model release . Period. Google’s lawyers know that, but in their “we’re the king of the hill” arrogance, they simply don’t care.

If that were actually true, then no newspaper could ever publish pictures that include people. Likewise, the evening news would never have street scenes. If you're in a public place, how much privacy do you expect? There are webcams all over the public sphere now - on the morning news, I regularly see coverage of highway traffic during the morning rush hour reports.

If Google is invading privacy with their street pictures, then every news organization on the planet has been invading privacy since the invention of the camera. Cees (and everyone else who seems to have jumped to wild conclusions on this) needs to take a few deep breaths and relax.

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